Peter's Interest

BMW and Apple may rekindle a courtship put on hold after an exploratory visit by executives of the world's top maker of electronic gadgets to the headquarters of the word's biggest seller of premium cars. Apple chief executive Tim Cook went to BMW's headquarters last year and senior Apple executives toured the carmaker's Leipzig factory to learn how it manufactures the i3 electric car, two sources familiar with the talks told Reuters. The dialogue ended without conclusion because Apple appears to want to explore developing a passenger car on its own, one of the sources said. Also, BMW is being cautious about sharing its manufacturing know-how because it wants to avoid becoming a mere supplier to a software or internet giant. During the visit, Apple executives asked BMW board members detailed questions about tooling and production and BMW executives signalled readiness to license parts, one of the sources said. News of the Leipzig visit first emerged in Germany's ...

Apple Inc will launch the next generation of its Apple TV set-top box in September, with a new remote and support for Siri voice control, online publisher BuzzFeed has reported.  The new Apple TV will have a slimmer chassis, a "drastically improved" remote with touch-pad input, increased on-board storage and an operating system that will support Siri, BuzzFeed said, citing sources familiar with the matter.  The device will be launched with its own App Store and a software development kit for app developers, the website said.  Apple did not immediately respond to phone calls seeking comment.  The Apple TV has not been refreshed since 2013.  The iPhone maker was expected to unveil a new version in June at its annual Word Wide Developers Conference, but it launched the Apple Music streaming service.

If one of Apple's patent applications is anything to go by, we might see it start putting very tiny cameras in some of its products. Apple filed a patent last September for the design of a 2mm-long camera that would be able to capture sharp, high-resolution images. This, the patent said, "would make the camera suitable for use in small devices," but didn't specify which of Apple's devices this might be.  We've already heard from 9to5Mac's Mark Gurman that the next version of the Apple Watch is expected to come with a camera so people can make FaceTime calls.  There's no actual proof that this patent is for an Apple Watch camera, though. Apple is continually trying to make all of its products slimmer. The protruding camera lens on the back of the iPhone 6 actually prevents it from lying flat, and disrupts the clean lines of the rest of the phone's design. Apple has even hidden the lens in previous promotional images.  It could be that Apple is tr...

Hackers always enjoy a product launch, and for good reason. Come the public release of any new smartphone, app, or service, hackers are given a new challenge and toy to play with, and will race to be the first group or lone wolf to crack its defences. This is particularly true for Apple products, where there is a massive jailbreaking community.  Jailbreaking is a popular practice that lets hackers remove the controls Apple builds into its products to stop people taking certain actions -- like downloading applications from third-party stores.  As a result, it's no surprise in the run-up to the release of Apple Pay, a contactless payment service, everyone from the Hacker News to The Guardian warned hackers would find ways to exploit the service.  Yet, come the release of Apple Pay in the UK on July 14, the doomsaying didn't ring true and we're still yet to hear about a successful scam or proof of concept attack targeting the platform.  According to security firm Fir...

Speed Fetch is offering free downloadable video content through Wi-Fi hot spots across the country at speeds up to 60Mbps, or higher than what 4G and 3G mobile connections offer today.  NEW DELHI: 4G and 3G could well be passe if a new mobile application manages to deliver on its promise. Speed Fetch is offering free downloadable video content through Wi-Fi hot spots across the country at speeds up to 60Mbps, or higher than what 4G and 3G mobile connections offer today. For example, a 100MB video can be downloaded in less than 30 seconds on Ozone Wi-Fi network from the app, compared to one minute on 4G and nine minutes on 3G. While the company promises speeds up to 60Mbps in ideal situations, executives said actual speeds can vary between 15 and 30Mbps depending on the customer's location, signal strength at that location and the number of people using WiFi network at that time. But the app does not promise just faster downloading speed. It also offers...

NEW YORK: ​Microsoft has rebranded its subscription-based music services as part of a ramped-up effort to compete with the likes of Apple, Google, Spotify and others. The US tech giant said its Groove Music -- the rechristened name for XBox Music -- will be built into the Windows 10 operating system that is designed to power computers and a variety of mobile devices. Microsoft fires 7,800, writes off $7.6 billion Nokia buy "Our fans asked for faster ways to access the music they love -- quickly, efficiently, and on their favorite devices," Microsoft's Brandon LeBlanc said in a blog post Monday. "And for that, we're proud to introduce the evolution of our current Xbox Music experience, now titled Groove, with new features we think you're going to love. "Groove describes what people feel and do with music, and is more intuitive for our Windows 10 customers on what they'll find with the app." Microsoft has struggled to gain traction in music datin...

Notification Centre widgets have become a useful part of iOS since they were first unveiled as part of iOS 8. If you have an iPhone or iPad, you can pull down the Notification Centre and add installed apps' widgets to the Today view by tapping Edit. From weather updates to sports scores, these widgets let you quickly check useful information without having to open apps. Most apps have a useful companion widget in the Notification Centre, while there are some that exist only for their widget. Orby Widgets is an app with 12 widgets that you might want to try. We checked it out to see if these widgets are useful. Design The Orby Widgets app isn't much more than a few cards that show you what each widget does. A button at the bottom left brings up the list of widgets and lets you tweak how the widgets display data. The app's design is satisfactory but we would've preferred it if the widget settings button was more prominently placed. The settings icon doesn't m...

Apple is sending a shiver down the spine of anyone who depends on mobile advertising for a living with the inclusion of ad-blocking extensions for iOS 9 in the next version of its Safari browser. The news surfaced last week, after developers discovered the provision in documentation following iOS 9's introduction at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference. The extensions can block cookies, images, resources, pop-ups and other content, Apple said. Apple's mobile users have been able to block ads in other browsers for some time. They just couldn't do it in Safari. Adding the capability to Apple's browser could be very problematic for content providers, because 55 percent of all mobile browsing is done with Safari. "This is worrisome," observed Joshua Benton, director of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University. "Publishers already make tiny dollars on mobile, even as their readers have shifted there in huge numbers....

Apple’s co-founder Steve Jobs never took engineering degree from any university but still considered as most creative   mind in the world of Technology today. Jobs unveiled many revolutionary products in his career days at Apple, setting new benchmarks for his competitors. Here are 10 most Popular Apple Products In History. Thank you Steve Jobs… Apple II It was 1977, when Apple Computers came up with first 8-bit computer designed for personal use. It ran 1 MHz MOS Technology 6502 Microprocessor and 4 KB RAM. Mac The Macintosh 128K was released in January 1984. Mac was first ever desktop to feature graphical user interface and mouse control, which proved beneficial and easy-to-perform over command line argument control featured by most of personal computers before release of Mac. iMac The year was 1998 when Steve Jobs unveiled first all-in-one desktop for personal use named iMac. During his keynote, he made audience understood meaning behind letter “i” in...